Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale team for a rare duet on the Bush ballad 'Glycerine' at Gibson Amphitheatre. Photo: Kelly A. Swift, for the Register. Click for more.

Can a six-hour, 11-band bacchanal boast across-the-board A-game performances, a Gwen Stefani surprise and the tautest hour from Linkin Park in a long while yet still not add up to a thoroughly satisfying experience?

It's happened before in the 23 years that modern-rock titan KROQ has presented its Almost Acoustic Christmas bashes. My mind reels back to 1999 at the arena then called the Pond, the only time this double-wide event was moved from its usual home at Gibson Amphitheatre to a single-size blowout in O.C. That night hardly anyone saved a lineup that included Oasis, Foo Fighters, Beck, Blink-182, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, 311, Save Ferris and Rob Zombie. How could so much add up to so little?

Reasons are hard to pinpoint. Often it's the audience, especially on Saturdays, when party people live it up too hard too early and are wiped out once the major stuff arrives.

Other times redundancy breeds lethargy that's hard to shake – much like this year's opening third, which found energetic but one-dimensional half-hour turns from Northern Irish outfit Two Door Cinema Club and breakout acts Walk the Moon and Youngblood Hawke all blurring into one bland mix. (More of the same calculated quirk and tribal rhythm is due Sunday from Grouplove, Neon Trees and Imagine Dragons.)

Before Wisconsin-spawned rock band Garbage took the stage at the Hollywood Palladium Tuesday night, the anticipation was almost palpable. The swelling, capacity crowd pushed, shoved and slithered its way – some with multiple cocktails in hand – to press against the barrier mere feet from the stage. As it set time approached, house music played teasingly, fading in and out, leading to cheers ... followed by audible disappointment every time it would pick up again, the stage still empty. This crowd was anything but patient.

For locals who missed the band during its two-night stint at El Rey Theatre in April or a quick, hit-filled set at KROQ's annual Weenie Roast on Cinco de Mayo in Irvine, this night was a treat. The set list didn't vary much from other outings, but redheaded vixen Shirley Manson sure was in a playful mood.

Fans who managed to snag a spot near the front got quite the show, as Manson teased and taunted them confidently, dancing just inches from outreached hands and shooting sexy glances straight into the eyes of a few lucky audience members – men and women – as she delivered lines like “please me, tease me, go ahead and leave me” amid “I Think I'm Paranoid” and softly cooing “you can touch me if you want” during “Queer.”

It's been seven years since the great '90s-launched band Garbage went on indefinite hiatus, following the tour behind 2005's Bleed Like Me. Since then there has been little to suggest they'd ever get back together, apart from a one-off benefit performance in 2007 and an unreleased track for a charity album the year after that.

In the meantime, vocalist Shirley Manson attempted a series of collaborations -- with, among others, the Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin, the Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan and former Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery -- all for a solo album that never materialized. (Instead, she took a role on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.)

As for the rest of the band, Duke Erikson spent time working with the BBC, Steve Marker got into film scoring and drummer Butch Vig bolstered his already impressive list of production credits, helming acclaimed efforts from Jimmy Eat World and Against Me! and winning a Grammy for his work on Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown.

Last February, however, time having healed some fractious wounds, Garbage finally re-entered a studio for a week, then began recording their fifth album in earnest by fall. The music they've produced has been described as noisily abrasive and heavily electro, yet I suspect it will still be recognizably melodic.

Vig recently told Rolling Stone: "I think you can hear some energy and a vibe in the tracks that sounds refreshing -- a little bit more to me like the first two records. Somehow we have a collective sound. When we spin the ideas through the four of our brains it comes out and it's kind of a thing that's identifiable. There's lots of elements of things we've always loved: noisy guitars, big electronic beats, atmospheric film moments."

During the Living Sisters' tribute to Pasty Cline at Disney Hall Saturday night (part of the L.A. Phil's Songbook series), newest Sister Alex Lilly explained that Cline's appeal was the way she balanced the “intimate and conversational with the epic.”

Unfortunately, that mix was not often heard on stage.

That's not to say the 90-minute show wasn't a pleasant evening of music. The Living Sisters — a quartet comprised of of local favorites Lilly, Eleni Mandell, Inara George (the vocal half of the Bird and the Bee) and Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark — are consistently charming singers, and the Cline catalog provides a wealth of material to choose from. They were backed by a fine band, anchored by drummer Don Heffington and widely regarded Greg Leisz on pedal steel, and brought a warmth and sense of shared appreciation while their guests, including John Doe and actor/singers John C. Reilly and Zooey Deschanel (of She & Him), relaxed on couches and easy chairs when not performing.

But a tribute show carries with it certain expectations, and on that count the concert fell short.

At their best, such homages not only honor the subject but also illustrate how their work informed the styles of the performers doing the saluting. That wasn't the case here. One problem is that, though the Living Sisters undoubtedly love Cline's music, they're not a good match for it. Shimmying around the stage in pastel cocktail dresses -- all shades of blue, Stark explained, because “Patsy had the brokenest heart in the world” -- their frilly girlishness, even delivered with a wink, felt contrary to Cline's womanly persona.

We start this week with things we already know but are now going on sale -- chiefly, U2 at Angel Stadium on June 6.

That 360° Tour second-leg stop, the band's first stadium appearance in Orange County (wrong: Zoo TV played there in '92), was announced the day after last month's massive Rose Bowl show, the love-it-or-loathe-it response to which suggests not all U2 fans are so thrilled that Bono & Co. have returned to playing enormous spaces.

Regardless, tickets go on sale Monday, Nov. 9, at 10 a.m. There will be an opening act, to be named later.